Niall Horan – Dinner Party Review

The last time we reviewed a Niall Horan album, we were accused of hating Northern Ireland. That is not true. Cult Following are firm believers that anyone from any walk of life can make an awful album. Horan’s previous collection of songs, while legally classified as music, left us wanting less from the former One Direction member. But Dinner Party, which feels like it fits the aesthetic of a gentrified Peckham street corner where you’ll be served up lukewarm Mexican food near a bus shelter, is a little better. A bullet to the knee is objectively better than a lobotomy. But you can hardly compare apples and oranges, or limb damage and outlawed psychological practices. Dinner Party is more of what the Horan fans want, and that is not necessarily good for them. Audiences never know what they want and it is up to an artist not just to challenge them, but to convince them of a new adventure. Horan fails on both counts with this ridiculous release.  

Three years on from The Show and Horan is still unwilling to put a convincing one on. Predictable work the whole way through. You can sense the echoed vocals before they become the feature of opening song, End of an Era, before the first song has even finished. Only the most skilful of musicians can find poetry and romance in the obvious. Horan is not that and is yet to learn his strengths. Every song ends suddenly, as though Horan has to rush off from a party he opted to host. Every song feels the same at the end. “Is that it?” is the response to most of those. When it feels as though Horan is building some momentum (rare it may be but it does occur), it ends so soon after. The title track is a little victory but suffers from this desire for catchiness fate. He succeeds in making catchy music, but to what end? What more is there to be said for these pieces of music other than they take a predictable route through songs that make you tap your foot along to them? 

There’s hardly a message to impart here or an instrumental occasion that feels all that unique. Monochromatic has the same guitar riff and tempo style as People Watching from Sam Fender, just lacking in sincerity, interest, and thrill. Horan knows his crowd and is yet to challenge them. He sings of love and the consequences of falling too hard in such a romanticised manner that he sounds completely disconnected from reality. He’s clearly not having dinner on the album cover, and has created some alternate reality, a state of hypernormalisation that begs the question as to whether this is an investigation into how much a fan will swallow without questioning the quality. Plenty in the way of duds and not enough to salvage the listening experience.  

Not even moments like Little More Time, which have a Take That sense of sickly sentimentality with a strong instrumental riff to back it all up, can save Horan here. He’s hindering his own work by accepting pop generalities. Horan presents himself on Boys Are Fun as the helping hand, a man to call in the heat of the night as they look to complain. He is here to hear. Unfortunately, we are here to hear what he has to say, too. Dinner Party is a repulsive piece of work from a man who knows his audience’s age remains the same as he gets older. The larger the gap, the stranger his pop generalities and romanticised writing, based on the idealistic perpetuation of pop and Hollywood confidence, sounds. Hollow work and the depiction of life as a care-free and romanticised experience feels a tad morally bankrupt, even if there are moments of pop placidity Horan gets right.